Your long run and your tempo run are almost the same. Long run should be an easy pace, dial it back some and throw in striders at the end. More easy running will yield healthier legs and allow for better aerobic development.
My biggest takeaway is slow down your miles and workouts your probably fit but not training a little too hard. Ik you want to get fit quick but there’s really no cheating this sport (unless you dope). Time and consistency will yield better results than overtraining and always being a little too zapped.
Ok, I'm getting a general less emphasis on workouts and more on mileage kind of consensus, and also time trials aren't really ideal at all. A lot of it checks out. Kind of sucks having done the wrong things slightly over the course of this season. Going to rest up over break and give it another shot with easier pacing, or maybe a 1600m instead to move down a distance for the mileage I've been sacrificing for intensity, to just set up with a sub 4:30 to have a stepping point of speed next season.
Also I don't feel like it's iron, since workouts have been fine and I've not been DNFing them or anything, but it could be - it's just a bit inconvenient to check. I'll see if I can get something.
I'll give updates for how it goes next week I guess.
On another note, how do you guys find fast track or road races in the area to compete in? I can find lots of random races but I have no idea how competitive any would be and there is no seeding so it doesn't seem worth it to run them, but there certainly are some that exist and it would be really nice to get out there and race.
This post was edited 1 minute after it was posted.
FWIW I find that the alphaflys are faster than dragon flies when running slower than 4:30ish pace. I think you have to be moving pretty quick to get the full benefit of the DFs. When I was training to break 4:50 in the mile this summer I found the AFs faster and that’s close-ish to the pace you’re running the 3200m.
also yea get in a real race, and you maybe didn’t taper enough. Tapering is very individual. Some take longer than others to shed the fatigue built up during training
I think for starters you should be more proud of your accomplishments. For seconds it looks like you've been training for a half marathon on paper but feel upset that you didn't knock a 3200m race out of the park on the first try. Maybe try lowering the volume and length of rest intervals on speed days, e.g. 3 minutes jog recovery is an absurdly long recovery for 400 repeats.
Thanks for the kind words. It's not that I'm not proud, it's just that I'm running what I've run before already even when performing much better in training, and it feels like a cop-out to just say it is because I am time-trialling instead of racing despite it playing a large factor.
And yeah, the DF/supershoe kinda makes sense, I always felt that dragonflies always felt better at sub 4:20 pace (i.e. kicking, or the full 800m) but cruising and distance races the super shoes even on a track feel easier. It's a fine line for me when all of my fastest miles 4:32/4:33 have been run in vaporflys instead which is tbh really weird.
I don't have experience with the exact same challenges you're dealing with, but I did manage improve a lot my freshman year of college and have seen a lot of the good, bad, and ugly of college training in general.
Some things that stand out to me:
Seems like you're both overanalyzing and overcooking the hard race specific workouts.
At a glance I'm not sure you're using that linked plan correctly, nor is it a great plan for you to begin with. You seem to be trying to skip required steps of development without the fundamentals of fitness to back up this ambition.
Related to that you're seemingly lacking in the fundamentals of big aerobic base and flat out speed.
Not sure exactly how these long tempos and fast-ish long runs fit in but these might be interfering with recovery if they are already within a crowded week of other workouts.
Time trials are really damn hard. It's not fair to judge yourself too harshly until you get in an actual race.
You really should get some running buddies if you don't already have them.
Correct me if I'm wrong but you seem to be targeting posted walk-on standards without actually knowing if hitting those standards will get you a spot on the team. If this is the case get firm targets from the coach.
These low-moderate volume high intensity weeks seem like they are just mentally and physically grinding you down and aren't actually well suited for the level of improvement you need to make. I think you would benefit from more consistent running up towards that 70mpw range and focusing on relatively chill tempo/threshold work and very short speed/hill work. You need to really expand your fundamental fitness before sharpening that into peak 3000m/5000m speed.
Look up the Summer of Malmo threads -somewhat of a Letsrun meme at this point but I think a lot of the concepts would help you. Particularly the deliberate reduction of obsessive structure while cultivating sustainable discipline and joy for the sport.
dude, transfer to UC santa cruz, a sciac school, or one of the weaker NAIA/D2. track schools are endlessly abundant in CA and i can think of a list of teams you would make. many of whom are in-state publics. and you would be on the team getting coached instead of self-training and pouting sensei will never notice me. and some of them are good academic schools, eg, santa cruz.
if you told me your numbers and asked where to go, that's what i would say. no one on here would point you to irvine. dozens of seconds behind the standard at the d1 level is not just like dropping from 530 to 515 in the mile, a little fitness, some mental toughness, it's a qualitative jump. as the times drop it gets harder to drop time increments. like you need to go from ok to pretty darned good to get to the time you want. that's not just work a little harder or different and it pops out the machine. some people never get there working their butt off.
i say that, you are obviously intensely obsessed with running college track, working very hard, but just at the wrong place for that to happen. rather than acknowledge that, and use the same intricate detail skills to make something actually happen, we're gonna talk workouts and split hairs. if you want to actually run college drop the poseur shop talk, and simply look up schools who take guys who run your events in times you did in HS.
You matched your PR in a solo time trial and you’re upset about it?
this is his Rudy story and he's supposed to be handed his walkon now for all his hard work.
he has made the fundamental mistake of trying to train solo to try and walk on to a top 20 cross team, when he has times that would make few d1s at all. basically a d3 portfolio. he could have dropped 10 seconds a mile and UCI would still tell him too slow. wrong school choice if he wanted to run, which those endlessly detailed posts scream he does. i played 2 sports in college and i didn't think stuff through in half this detail.
in this context, oddly, going to an easier running school is saying you want it bad. going to UCI is like you want to tell people you're trying to walk on for years while it never happens. kind of a poseur thing.
dude, transfer to UC santa cruz, a sciac school, or one of the weaker NAIA/D2. track schools are endlessly abundant in CA and i can think of a list of teams you would make. many of whom are in-state publics. and you would be on the team getting coached instead of self-training and pouting sensei will never notice me. and some of them are good academic schools, eg, santa cruz.
if you told me your numbers and asked where to go, that's what i would say. no one on here would point you to irvine. dozens of seconds behind the standard at the d1 level is not just like dropping from 530 to 515 in the mile, a little fitness, some mental toughness, it's a qualitative jump. as the times drop it gets harder to drop time increments. like you need to go from ok to pretty darned good to get to the time you want. that's not just work a little harder or different and it pops out the machine. some people never get there working their butt off.
i say that, you are obviously intensely obsessed with running college track, working very hard, but just at the wrong place for that to happen. rather than acknowledge that, and use the same intricate detail skills to make something actually happen, we're gonna talk workouts and split hairs. if you want to actually run college drop the poseur shop talk, and simply look up schools who take guys who run your events in times you did in HS.
I was offered to UCSC actually. But at the end of the day, academics came #1 choice and it wasn't really on the table with UCI's CS program. It's not that I'm hell-bent on running college track. Honestly, I want a team or group to train with conveniently at a competitive level and have races to attend and etc. It doesn't even have to be track, I've often pondered a move up to the half mary or further when I found that running long and 'comfortably hard' is far easier than pushing past threshold. But anyhow, UCI's run club is not really fast enough at all, while the D1 team seems to be a far leap I guess. There are local competitive track clubs but they practice about 3 miles away from campus which becomes a bit of a problem to attend. So with spotty freshman year time planning it ends up being running at ~2ams all alone.
I'm going to catch up with some sleep this break and run easier for a week and see how I feel. Also, next few seasons definitely will change to a more conservative traditional plan without those long blocks of hard workouts and instead more base building and mileage and hill sprints and basic components. I've been reading Mark Coogan's book and it seems to be entirely different method from the Self Coached Runner but far more modern and generous with variety and fundamentals, and proven results as well. So maybe something to try there. My past two seasons of relatively poorer workout-to-race results might be a result of following a bit too old of a training plan or one that doesn't work well for me, and training too hard and burning out. The difference in the two books is crazy in how one doesn't talk about recovery at all and stacks workouts while the other emphasizes it hugely.
I don't have experience with the exact same challenges you're dealing with, but I did manage improve a lot my freshman year of college and have seen a lot of the good, bad, and ugly of college training in general.
Some things that stand out to me:
Seems like you're both overanalyzing and overcooking the hard race specific workouts.
At a glance I'm not sure you're using that linked plan correctly, nor is it a great plan for you to begin with. You seem to be trying to skip required steps of development without the fundamentals of fitness to back up this ambition.
Related to that you're seemingly lacking in the fundamentals of big aerobic base and flat out speed.
Not sure exactly how these long tempos and fast-ish long runs fit in but these might be interfering with recovery if they are already within a crowded week of other workouts.
Time trials are really damn hard. It's not fair to judge yourself too harshly until you get in an actual race.
You really should get some running buddies if you don't already have them.
Correct me if I'm wrong but you seem to be targeting posted walk-on standards without actually knowing if hitting those standards will get you a spot on the team. If this is the case get firm targets from the coach.
These low-moderate volume high intensity weeks seem like they are just mentally and physically grinding you down and aren't actually well suited for the level of improvement you need to make. I think you would benefit from more consistent running up towards that 70mpw range and focusing on relatively chill tempo/threshold work and very short speed/hill work. You need to really expand your fundamental fitness before sharpening that into peak 3000m/5000m speed.
Look up the Summer of Malmo threads -somewhat of a Letsrun meme at this point but I think a lot of the concepts would help you. Particularly the deliberate reduction of obsessive structure while cultivating sustainable discipline and joy for the sport.
This is a good post OP. You should listen to it. I agree, above all else, just get your overall volume up and then some relaxed tempos/threshold work and short hill sprints. SOM is a great place to start.
And get your serum ferritin checked. Thank me later.
This is a good post OP. You should listen to it. I agree, above all else, just get your overall volume up and then some relaxed tempos/threshold work and short hill sprints. SOM is a great place to start.
And get your serum ferritin checked. Thank me later.
Very good point, I forgot the bloodwork piece but that is essential given the context provided. Ferritin, Iron, VitD are important for runners. The doc will probably order a CBC as well which is good just to see whats going on -you can infer a wide range of other potential issues from a CBC.
It's common to find yourself deficient in something while figuring out lifestyle in that first year of college.
Ex college sprinter here. Every college in any division has their “walk on standards”, and they’re usually pretty ridiculous because every team always has walk ons that shouldn’t really be competing at all. If you show yhe coach at school this, and all the hard work you’ve put in, I’m sure they’ll let you train with them. Whether or not you’re getting on the bus is a different issue. But UCI isn’t a powerhouse program, I’m sure they’d let you train with them, as you’re relatively close to walk on standards. At my uni, the scholarship standard for the 400m was 47.00. The school record is 47.4, from like 12 years ago. DI by the way. So, I advise you to write up a big fat nice email!
Anything over 600m is just really hard to time trial solo.
If you are sitting in around 4:30 mile shape, running anything faster than 9:40 is going to be pretty tough.
You seem to be in fantastic aerobic shape, but what’s your speed like? Sub 4:40 pace for 2 miles is no joke. For most people that’s going to require at least a 4:20 flat out 1600m, which requires at least a flat out 1:58 800m, which will take about 53 flat for 400m, which takes about 24.5-25 for 200m.
Yep. All of these are things I was thinking about when jumping into this training, being limited by lower end speeds. I figured the plan detailed a 56s and 4:30 minimum speed requisites for 9:20s so it could happen, but it's definitely more reasonable to be way further under them.
I'm far from the 400m and 200m and it might take a season of mile-specific training to work the speed more. I haven't really learnt how to do that but I'll see.
I'm probably in slightly better than 4:30 shape now but without having touched on speed at all I don't think anything better than 4:25 at all. Maybe 4:28. So that could explain things. It definitely becomes easier if you have the speed kinda strength to hold the pace.
I’m saying this not to be rude but because most distance runners seem to struggle to understand this.
Why on earth do you think “Mile training” which for you will look something like 200s in 29-32 or 400s in 63-69 will get you to be capable of running 24 in a 200m or 53 in a 400m? This is like a marathon runner with 2:10 current 800m ability saying that they will start doing 800m repeats in 2:35 and 1600m repeats in 5:40 so that they can break 2:00 in the 800m.
Seeing that your aerobic strength is in a good place, I think you should incorporate weekly workouts like 6x150m w/ 6:00 rest, 8x 30-50m flys, 8x50-100m hill sprints etc. The kind of workouts 200/400m athletes do.
If you are stuck at roughly 56 for 400m, that is entirely your achilles heel right now.
This is a good post OP. You should listen to it. I agree, above all else, just get your overall volume up and then some relaxed tempos/threshold work and short hill sprints. SOM is a great place to start.
And get your serum ferritin checked. Thank me later.
Ok definitely, that's my plan after a final week of trying to salvage this block by extending taper and keeping a lil pace-work and then actually going for another 3200m with refreshed and conservative splits, out in ~4:55 considering that's my PR pace as of now regardless of workouts, and if I got more in the tank I'll negative split hella. - I was strictly following the book plan rushing up until right before my flight home and my final 5x800 was just 4 days before my flight so I had to time trial right then when I didn't feel the greatest.
I've read up extensively on Summer of Malmo and a lot of running literature all around these boards and in general - settled on the Self Coached Runner to try for my first solo season, guess it's one plan to check off as no-go for me, it's base was really good and similar to Malmo, and I was doing well, but then it got way too hard quickly - still putting together my mental picture of what good training is since we never had a hands-on coach in high school (track is just about self-coached, good cross country coach retired, so XC was self-done too, but at least I had fast teammates and enforced recovery days back then, the issue was mostly workouts were kind of all over the place with lack of purpose and assigned paces/rest like "go do 4-8-12-16-12-8-4 today").
For blood testing I'll have to see, I'll contact doctor about what I should get as a runner and get it done during my checkup over next few weeks. (sounds like CBC and serum iron/ferritin/vitamins?) But yes. Thank you both for the experience and knowledge, it's great to actually get some help and useful info on here rather than trolls.
This post was edited 6 minutes after it was posted.
Reason provided:
typo
I’m saying this not to be rude but because most distance runners seem to struggle to understand this.
Why on earth do you think “Mile training” which for you will look something like 200s in 29-32 or 400s in 63-69 will get you to be capable of running 24 in a 200m or 53 in a 400m? This is like a marathon runner with 2:10 current 800m ability saying that they will start doing 800m repeats in 2:35 and 1600m repeats in 5:40 so that they can break 2:00 in the 800m.
Seeing that your aerobic strength is in a good place, I think you should incorporate weekly workouts like 6x150m w/ 6:00 rest, 8x 30-50m flys, 8x50-100m hill sprints etc. The kind of workouts 200/400m athletes do.
If you are stuck at roughly 56 for 400m, that is entirely your achilles heel right now.
Touché. The "mile training to increase speed" was exactly what I was thinking but when you put it that way it's very clearly wrong. I'm not gonna be getting quicker at 200/400 by training the mile.
It's just that somehow over my 2 years in high school I'd ran my 400m down from 1:05 to around 55 where it is now just by doing strides so I guess I associated it with an improving mile time and not with what it properly was, just natural growth and development and the little I could get out of strides.
So yeah, definitely plan on doing speed development and hill sprint workouts, and the new Mark Coogan training methodology book I've been reading on incorporates tons of those into the plans. Guess it's something I've neglected/tried to replace with strides and pistol squats and it isn't doing it justice. That's big.
LOL that's funny, I totally forgot I wrote this thread! It came from a time when I was truly in the dumps after my first quarter of college not having made many friends at all and stressed from academics and the reality of it all (moving away from home and living alone) and when I was hell-bent on running fast and alone.
It got a lot lot better during my second and third quarters. First of all it's probably just cause I made friends (not just acquaintances like Q1) and started chilling more and running with actual other people (club, and stuff, who I didn't run with before cause I always pushed my own pace on regular days ;-;) as I reset my season and began getting back in shape. I also took a lot of advice from this thread to heart and started training more freeform and less religiously and aggressively. Less trying to hit fast-pace splits and gunning Vo2Max workouts, and more mileage and fun and not pushing pace every run. (actually, pretty much following SirPoc's Norwegian Singles thread here which inspired me a lot - I became a big commenter in their Strava group and got added to a funny WhatsApp group with the one and only SirPoopy 😅)
I finally trained consistently and with higher mileage (50-60mpw consistently just spamming 3 sub-threshold workouts a week and a medium-long run), which culminated in me running 15:09 for 3-miles XC in Late-April or May without a big taper or peak, which was definitely a step in the right direction in such a short time after burning out a whole season to only run 9:50 (again). Oh, but I also gave up on my goals of walking-on a few months before that point. After kind of settling in and making my friends and not being alone I rethought my mentality of why I wanted to compete and specifically at a cutthroat D1 level, and I found that I actually didn't care so much for it and just wanted people to run with honestly, and probably don't have the time to balance so much as an Honors student trying to double major in CompSci and Mathematics anyway. I'm going to focus in academics as the core of my college experience with being kinda fast just as a side dish.
Unfortunately I got ill soon after the 15:09 3-mi and then school was ending around that time after anyway, and I was preparing to take on a 12-day backpacking trip in New Mexico through summer where I wouldn't be able to run, so I called it a season.
This new season has been a rocky start after a few summer injuries and illnesses (messed around backpacking and injured my knee playing frisbee, plus later caught COVID bruh how does it still exist) and then just some busy sophomore year college stuff (okay okay I'll admit it it's partially due to having a gf and spending so much time with her now and aaaaaa that's crazy to even say) leading to me missing a few runs a week, but I still feel pretty fit (like....10:00 3200m fit? 4:40 mile fit? not the best but just a few months from back again) and I'm thinking about taking on a marathon for the first time potentially in this coming May. I'll continue upping mileage and try to get more consistent and back to my old levels of running, and ask SirPoc for advice and see if I have some natural talent in the longer longer distances (I'm really skinny and light and small and one of my friends who runs 2:26 says "skinny f*cks like you are always good at the thon").
But yeah! That's my update for now :) I've managed to keep running in my life and enjoy it and finally finally leave my running isolation and enjoy it with others, and along with all of my compromises (not walking-on) and successes (got faster still and raced some distances like 10k-half for the first time) it has been a pretty good year since I wrote this thread. Thanks for asking.
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